1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to beam splitting devices and, more particularly, to a beam splitting ball lens, a method for its manufacture, and an apparatus for its packaging.
2. Prior Art
Recent advances of technologies have lead to successful deployments of optics to cost-sensitive local area networking environments. To meet rapidly increasing bandwidth requirements for future multimedia computing and communications, planning for 10 Gb/s Ethernet is already underway. As technologies become gradually matured, optics will be used for even shorter data links, from inter-computer distances to intra-computer distances. Innovative, compact, and cost-effective packaging methods of optical components are actively being researched.
FIG. 1(a) illustrates a conventional beam splitter 106 and method to perform image relay and split. The beam-splitter 106 is shown surrounded by two pairs of imaging lenses 102, 104. Out of the four possible ports 108, 110, 112, 114 are two-input 108, 114 and two-output 110, 112 ports where input and split/combined output images are located. Such a system has been used to facilitate optical branching functions for parallel array of FIG. 1(a) is bulky, not to mention potential alignment and packaging complexities resulting therefrom. Thus, conventional beam-splitters 106 do not lend themselves to packaging methods of optical components that will be needed for future multimedia computing and communications.